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Comment by usrnm | Hacker News Reader

When I was young 20-30 years ago older people were saying that the Internet would make us dumb. Why learn anything when information is always readily available one search request away? Videogames were supposed to make me a blood-thirsty maniac, and don't even get me started on readily available porn. "Kids these days are lazy and don't want to learn" is one of the oldest memes in human history, with documented use going almost as far back as writing itself.

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The flipside of that take is that if you listened to technologists, then educational TV/CD-ROMs/laptops/the internet/tablets/educational games/digital blackboards/MOOCs/etc. were going to completely revolutionize education - but looking at the evidence, it doesn't seem like students have gained much at all from any of it.

I remember an educator ranting to me a long time ago that the only data-proven ways to meaningfully improve educational outcomes was to reduce classroom size and make sure kids got enough sleep + fed well enough, everything else was just a waste of time.

From all my years of schooling one of the biggest factors is the combination of level of interest from the student, with parent involvement following that, once you cross the basic threshold of stable home with regular sleep and food. Some kids don't care and even perfect parents won't matter, but disinterested parents also drag a bunch of kids down.

There has been a measurable and noticeable drop in attainment starting with smartphones entering the classroom, supercharged by COVID chaos, and finally with AI cheating being just the latest assault on learning.

Ask teachers that have been teaching for 10 years. Ask the professors how today's kids are different than the ones of yesteryear.

The move to de-tech the classroom will eventually help out I expect, but keeping kids (and adults!!!) from using cognitive shortcuts so they can develop their own sense of what's reasonable instead of taking information from a bought-and-paid-for oracle is going to remain a problem.

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